Subversive functionalism: For a less canonical critique in critical management studies

Introduction

It is widely recognized that critical management studies (CMS) has become something of an institution within business school academia. Troubled by this development, an increasing number within CMS have begun to voice concerns about how the field can maintain its critical edge on management as it is taught, studied and practiced. Some speak of complacency, normalization and closedness (Adler, 2008), and others of ‘the schlerosis of criticism’ (Parker, 2010) and lack of public engagement (Bridgman and Stephens, 2008).

Whereas the general thrust of this critique is towards being more critical, Spicer et al. (2009) have suggested a quite different direction. Instead of becoming more radical, CMS should aim for greater impact through tempered radicalism. This direction, which they refer to as critically performative, involves CMS becoming more caring, pragmatic, affirmative, engaged with potentialities and explicitly normative. Like others who have engaged with the notion (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012a; Tadajewski, 2010; Wickert and Schaefer, 2011), my point of departure is that this direction offers something important to CMS – an important supplement to how we think about engagement and impact. However, I contend that the CMS cannot become truly critically performative without also considering how the canons of CMS constrain such a change.

In making this argument, I partially follow Voronov’s (2008) analysis as he draws on Bourdieusian concepts to suggest that the habitus of the CMS scholar leads to the field’s potential for substantive change remaining ‘virtually untapped’. Overcoming this situation, he suggests, calls for the CMS scholar to overcome the symbolic violence exerted by mainstream academia and change how we engage. His analysis focuses on how CMS replicates a mainstream habitus through perpetuating the theory–practice split while also privileging academic publication and researcher identity over ‘non-academic’ alternatives.

Taking further Bourdieu’s analytics as presented in Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984), however, would lead us also to question the patterns of consumption that are bound to the enactment of a field-prescribed habitus. In an academic field, such ‘consumption’ is largely theoretical in nature and concerns the theoretical canons that structure how one does what can be considered CMS research. Indeed, an awareness of how appropriate CMS practice is constrained by canonical texts and theories CMS only becomes more necessary as CMS becomes more institutionalized: a wealth of authoritative texts now exist to express what can be considered ‘fit to print’ (Ashcraft, forthcoming) under the rubric of CMS, and these texts will invariably influence how CMS can legitimately be practiced in the future.

This article proceeds in two parts. In the first part, after describing in generic terms the institutionalization of CMS and the call for Critical Performativity, I argue that ‘CMS critique’ is becoming canonical in the sense that research, in order to be considered ‘CMS research’ and be consecrated as a model of practice, must work within a repertoire of theories that are homogenous in being (i) appropriated from outside the business school, (ii) overtly critical and (iii) ascribed superior sophistication. This is a pattern that might fundamentally hinder the pursuit of critical performativity. In the second part of the article, I develop an alternative, non-canonical approach to critique under the headline of ‘subversive functionalism’. CMS research need not, I argue, be constrained by its canons, but can draw on other theoretical resources to articulate a critically performative critique. Developing that notion, I propose a set of tactics for doing subversive functionalism and exemplify the potential through a reading of recent theories of user innovation. Such a subversively oriented engagement with functionalist theories can provide an important supplementary approach to how CMS gets done and how the field seeks to change management as it is practiced, studied and taught.

Institutionalized critical management studies and critical performativity

Critical studies of management and organization have a long history that considerably predates critical management studies, famously exemplified by Smith, Marx and Weber. However, it is only in the past 30 years or so that radically critical research has found a place in the business schools of North America and Europe through the influential work of scholars like Clegg and Dunkerley (1977), Wood and Kelly (1978), Frost (1980), Clegg (1981), Deetz (1982), Alvesson (1985), Willmott (1987) and Calas and Smircich (1991). In the capitalized form of critical management studies, CMS, the term did not come into common usage before Alvesson and Willmott (1992a) published a collection of original papers exploring the relevance of the Frankfurt School of critical theory under that title.

Since then, CMS has assumed the status of an institution within business school academia (Adler et al., 2007), as evidenced by the academic infrastructure that now surrounds it: there is a bi-annual CMS conference and a research division at the American Academy of Management; there are recognized CMS scholars in full professorships and influential positions in the academic community; there are dedicated clusters of critical researchers in Europe as well as some in the US, even decidedly critical management departments at several UK universities like those at Queen Mary or Leicester. Today, one can choose to ‘do CMS research’ and new doctoral students might look forward to entire careers ‘in CMS’. Such careers might start with a reading of one of the edited volumes (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 2003), an Oxford handbook (Alvesson et al., 2009) or one of several collections of classic papers (Alvesson, 2011; Alvesson and Willmott, 2012; Grey and Willmott, 2005), or examining the pages of several journals receptive to CMS scholarship. CMS has become, as Thompson (2004) writes, a label and, indeed, it is an attractive one (Parker, 2002; Reedy, 2008).

But what is this thing called critical management studies, then? After all, CMS is

. . . a diverse group. [CMS scholars] work from a range of disciplines (including strategy, accounting, organization theory, etc.); are interested in a range of topics (such as power, identity, gender, epistemology, etc.); work from a variety of perspectives (Marxist, poststructuralist, social constructionist, etc.) and embrace a variety of research methods. (Cunliffe, 2008: 936).

In their seminal history of CMS, Fournier and Grey (2000) described CMS research as having three characteristics. It is, firstly, reflexive in the sense that it is committed to questioning the philosophical and methodological basis for research. Second, it de-naturalizes by challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about social and organizational orders, exposing the historically contingent nature of the self-evident ‘truths’ that dominate management theory and practice. Thirdly, CMS research is not committed to the instrumental aims of most management research, but is non- or anti-performative in orientation. So, whereas ‘mainstream’ management research can generally be said to be research for management and organizational efficiency, CMS is research on management and not necessarily directed towards aims that might further a managerialist agenda. To distance themselves from a ‘mainstream’ position, Fournier and Grey (2000: 18) suggest that ‘maybe what unites the very disparate contributions within CMS is the attempt to expose and reverse the work of mainstream management theory’.

Less oppositionally defined, CMS is concerned with critique and the introduction of critique to the context of the business school. In her article on ‘Making the business school more critical’, Antonacopoulou (2010: S9) states that ‘being critical implies scepticism towards arguments, assumptions, practices, recognizing the impact of social and political dynamics and the implications of the inequalities of power and control’. While critique in this very broad sense – equivalent to what Reynolds (1999) describes as reflection – might encompass most decent academic endeavors, it is towards the end of the definition that we find the specific type of critical orientation that most characterizes CMS: the critique of inequalities of power and control. It is marked by critical reflection (Reynolds, 1999). Even if the boundaries might well be blurred between CMS, interpretive work employing theories in less critical interpretations and even with the mainstream that Fournier and Grey describe with some confidence, CMS is marked by being ‘radically critical and intrinsically suspicious’ and encompasses research drawing on ‘the Frankfurt School and related authors and lines of thought such as Foucault, critical poststructuralism, neo-Marxism, certain versions of feminism, etc.’ (Alvesson, 2008: 13). It is, then, in regard to questions of power, ideology and domination, that Fournier and Grey (2000: 16) must be thinking when they write that ‘to be engaged in critical management studies means, at the most basic level, to say that there is something wrong with management, as a practice and as a body of knowledge, and that it should be changed’.

Despite what might appear as a form of agreement over what it means to be critical and to do CMS, the question of performativity continues to be the subject of debate amongst CMS scholars: should CMS aim to instigate change and, if yes, how?

One axis in the debate often unfolds across what Ashcraft (forthcoming) describes as CMS’s ‘classic cleavage’, namely between proponents of forms of (neo-)Marxist theory and of varieties of postmodernism/post-structuralism. At stake here is a concern about the normative basis for practicing critique (Adler et al., 2007). Another axis relates to the dilemma of institutionalization being at once both a possible strength and a possible liability as regards the project’s political dimensions (Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011). Those skeptical of institutionalization might argue that it draws CMS scholars away from both practical engagement and truly radical critique (e.g. Adler, 2008; Bridgman and Stephens, 2008; Parker, 2010), whereas the more optimistic interpretation might talk about developing a ‘mature politics’ (Grey, 2005) and drawing on the legitimacy afforded by a solid foothold within the business school (Grey, 2007) to make critical reflection a more integral part of management education. Getting into the classroom, one might say, is a pre-condition for making business students ‘critically informed’ practitioners (Learmonth, 2007), but this requires, or at least disciplines, the researcher to be much less ‘dangerous’ and less in opposition.

These dilemmas and the tensions between different forms of CMS research only seem to grow as the institutionalization of CMS increases to the extent that many may be asking ‘what holds the project together, what it is trying to achieve and whether it is actually achieving these aims’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 538). Precisely to answer these questions and bridge some of the controversy in intra-field debates, Spicer et al. (2009) suggested a reconceptualization, namely critical performativity. They insist that CMS should be seen as ‘a project’ and one that is thoroughly political and then draw on Butler and Austen to reframe the meaning of performativity to make this explicit. In their reading, performativity does not necessarily only refer to a commitment to instrumentally rational means–ends considerations: ‘Performativity is not bad in itself. The problem is to carefully decide what kind of performativity we want’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 554). Critical performativity, then, is about an ‘active and subversive intervention into managerial discourses and practices. This is achieved through affirmation, care, pragmatism, engagement with potentialities, and a normative orientation’ – such an orientation, they posit, represents a ‘more “constructive” direction for CMS’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 538) than the oppositional, distanced and sometimes over-determined positions taken in some CMS research. As such, it represents a reformist, rather than continued radical, line and an approximation to management as it practiced and studied. This is a line that has subsequently been suggested as relevant also in the specific contexts of research on leadership (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012a), marketing (Tadajewski, 2010) and corporate sustainability (Wickert and Schaefer, 2011) and, although it is not a position of being ‘for management’ (Clegg et al., 2006), it is much less categorically oppositional than CMS’s more habitual stances.

Canonical critique and a habitus of CMS

The concern of this article is not so much institutionalization of CMS as it is the conditions that the institutionalization creates for the pursuit of critical performativity: can CMS, as an increasingly institutionalized field, become critically performative by changing tactics, by engaging differently and by studying ‘the organizations to come, rather than focusing on rejecting the organization we currently have’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 551)?

One answer to this question might draw on Voronov’s Bourdieusian analysis of the habitus of the CMS scholar (Voronov, 2008). To summarize this inspiration, Bourdieu uses the term habitus to describe the shared dispositions of agents within a given field of practice. It ‘provides the cognitive and somatic structures necessary to make sense of and enact positions in the field’ (Voronov, 2008: 940), that is, the habitus structures how one understands what others in a given field do and how, in turn, one acts in ways that are appropriate to demonstrate that one legitimately belongs in the field. Thus, the enactment of the field-prescribed habitus reproduces the field.

Through these concepts, we can see the institutionalized form of CMS as an autonomous field in that it constitutes a distinct form of social practice within the wider field of business school academia, with its own rules and legitimate positions. As such, it also structures the habitus of the agents in it, that is, those who do and aspire to do CMS research, as they seek to learn the ‘rules of the game’ and become acceptable to other CMS researchers. The habitus then gets enacted by CMS scholars as they go about doing and publishing ‘CMS research’, which contributes back to the on-going structuring of field as composed of texts and practices – what gets done demarcates what can legitimately be done in the future.

The field-prescribed habitus of the CMS scholar, for Voronov, is not markedly different from what is found in other academic fields. He proposes that the habitus of the CMS scholar, like that of the ‘mainstream’ business school academic, is one of doing research for research’s own sake and not for real-world impact, just as it privileges the knowledge contributions of purely academic research over that of engaged scholars and practitioners. For him, the answer to increasing the practical relevance of CMS lies in challenging established modes of research and engaging differently. In a sense, the intent of this argument is similar to that of Spicer et al. (2009). Yet it is important to note that in making this assertion Voronov is concerned with the specific issue of practical relevance and not with the actual ‘crafting’ of research (how theory is mobilized, how methods are applied or how research is written up).

If we follow Bourdieu’s (1984) analysis in Distinction, we are alerted to an aspect of the CMS habitus that is more fundamental than how CMS scholars actually engage. Bourdieu argues that the habitus is forcefully enacted in the making of aesthetic judgments, that is, in the evaluative criteria that guide our consumption of particular cultural products. What we valorize as ‘good culture’ worthy of consumption serves to differentiate us from certain social groups and affiliate us to others. The products of good culture become consecrated and can attain a canonical status within the field to the extent that being part of a social group requires one to consume that particular canon.

While the notion of canon might connote stability more than change, for Bourdieu it should been seen neither as static nor pre-determined. Rather, it is a dynamic means of developing a group identity. Social groups create identities by appropriating the consumption patterns of other groups to which they aspire and, perhaps more importantly, rejecting those of groups they want to distance themselves from. In this respect, an understanding of canons and the appropriation patterns that shape them become essential to understanding the field and its agents.

This prompts two important questions: has CMS’s institutionalization led to a solidified canon of critical research perspectives or is it indeed the purported ‘big tent’? And, if a canon has emerged, what characterizes it and its origins?

In answering these questions, it is a helpful feature of academia that canons are more readily identifiable in academic fields than in most others given that academic production is primarily textual – the legitimate canon, as reflective of a common habitus underlying research practice, can be discerned from the ‘paper trail’ that is the fields’ publication. More importantly, there is a stratified hierarchy in publications, in which some texts become more authoritative by virtue of how they are published. In this way the canon is expressed not just in what type of research gets published, but also in what gets included in handbooks, in edited volumes depicting the state of the field and in collections of classic papers. Such books are not only ‘fairly useful scholarly devices’ (Prasad, 2008: 280; Nicholson, 2013), but also models of a research practice and a reflection of the habitus that one must enact to legitimately gain access to a field. As CMS has institutionalized, a number of such books have been published and can serve to display the nature of a CMS canon. What is the model of research that they consecrate?

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies (Alvesson et al., 2009) represents a seminal collection in the field of CMS, as noted by several authors (Costas, 2010; Parker, 2010; Prasad and Prasad, 2012). This volume, containing 28 chapters written by notable scholars in the field, is edited by Todd Bridgman and CMS ‘icons’ Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott. The handbook contains four parts, one of which is about ‘theoretical approaches’ and another ‘key topics and issues’. Together, they broadly stake out CMS’s ‘tent’ of theoretical perspectives. The part devoted to theory contains four chapters representing approaches that are ‘widely adopted and influential’ (Alvesson et al., 2009: 2) on critical theory, poststructuralism, critical realism and labour process theory, thus representing a range of inheritance from the Frankfurt School, Foucault and Marx. The chapters on ‘key topics and issues’ reveal the ways that authors draw on these traditions, either directly or through intermediaries. The key concepts are often drawn from sociology, and unsurprisingly include power, discourse, subjectivity, gender, domination, oppression and emancipation.

As such, the handbook retraces a pattern seen in earlier volumes such as the ones edited by Alvesson and Willmott (2003) and Grey and Willmott (2005). Weber’s concepts of the iron cage and leadership (Barker, 2005; Hopfl, 2005) make entries in those volumes, as does Lefebvre’s notion of representational spaces (Burrell and Dale, 2003), but for the most part, familiar theories and theorists are mobilized, with a predominance of deconstructive perspectives informed by postmodernism and poststructuralism as well as some neo-Marxist works following critical theory. The same is also the case in two recent edited volumes of ‘classics’ of CMS scholarship (Alvesson, 2011; Alvesson and Willmott, 2012) that have sought to draw together the work that has been most instrumental in defining and informing CMS. Both reinforce the emerging image of institutionalized CMS as radiating from an acknowledged set of ‘guru theorists’ (Alvesson, 2008), accompanied by consecrated work on CMS by the authors themselves and other notable figures.

We find a slightly different pattern in Kelemen and Rumens’ book (2008), where they seek to provide an overview not only of a set of perspectives that are currently associated with CMS, but also some that have unrealized potential. This book’s first chapter rehearses the genealogy of critical management scholarship as drawing initially on the Frankfurt School and later incorporating insights from postmodernism/poststructuralism. Then, in the section on ‘Theoretical perspectives on management’, they present perspectives that are already familiar to CMS (postmodernism and deconstruction), one that is in some use (poststructuralist feminism) and some that have yet to gain substantial traction (queer theory and American pragmatism). The authors argue, as does Ashcraft (forthcoming) of feminist perspectives in general, that poststructuralist feminism following Foucault represents a natural extension of critical management scholarship through its focus on oppression as rooted in gender and gendered assumptions. The same is the case with queer theory, as also suggested by Parker (2001). This perspective, which covers a considerable diversity, is presented as drawing on many of the other theoretical lenses presented in the book in seeking to question taken-for-granted aspects of organizational life. Similarly to queer theory, American pragmatism as associated with Dewey is described as a largely untapped resource, but one that is deemed to have great potential in light of its ‘in the making’ view of reality, social model of knowledge, pluralist methodology, embodied rationality and, importantly, its emancipatory ethics.

Taken together, these published works give an impression that, although CMS may well be a big tent, only a relatively small palette of work is actually deemed ‘fit to print’ in its name (Ashcraft, forthcoming) and, indeed, to be worthy of consecration. But what characterizes the canon of institutionalized CMS? And how do they shape, possibly even determine, critical practices, particularly as regards a critically performative orientation?

The tension: Critical performativity and canonical critique

If we examine the theories that are consecrated ‘as CMS’, three characteristics are apparent. First, the theories draw on non-business school sources. Rather, they are, like many early CMS scholars themselves (Fournier and Grey, 2000; Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011), drawn from university disciplines like sociology and philosophy, in some cases communication studies, where critical analysis has a stronger and longer tradition than in the business school (Ashcraft, forthcoming). This appropriation pattern, perhaps, contributes to showcasing the uneasy relationship that many CMS scholars seem to have with the business school that houses them and the state of its knowledge (Reedy, 2008). Secondly, theories of CMS are based on a radical and overt critique of social conditions, oppression and power that, at least originally, served the purpose of analysis at the societal level. As a consequence, theories seem to get dismissed if they are not sufficiently radical in their interpretations (e.g. Alvesson, 2008) or critical in the wrong way (e.g. Whittle and Spicer, 2008), whereas radicalism and ‘dangerous’ critique get valorized and perhaps even romanticized (Bridgman and Stephens, 2008; Parker, 2002). Finally, the theories in use by CMS are ascribed, albeit primarily by CMS scholars, a higher level of sophistication than ‘mainstream’ theories. Whereas mainstream theory sometimes does not even get viewed as actual theory, CMS’s theories lend themselves to work that often turns out less accessible and more steeped in philosophically grounded reflections (Grey and Sinclair, 2006; Thomas and Anthony, 1996). There seems to be, in other words, a particular aesthetic underlying the selection of CMS theory that must be enacted as part of a CMS habitus. This is evident both in the texts that are actually presented as models of current practice and those that are presented as having potential: the perspectives suggested by Kelemen and Rumens (2008) as relevant, but unused, share these very characteristics rather than challenging them.

Recall the intent of critical performativity: to suggest for CMS a ‘more “constructive” direction’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 538) of closer and more caring engagement with practitioners. If CMS is to be a political project directed at contributing to a change in how management is practiced, Spicer et al. posited that CMS should not become more radical, but more pragmatic and more focused on dialogue with practitioners, even if that means recognizing as legitimate the contexts and constraints they might experience. In this sense, their perspective is exemplary of an incremental approach to critique (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992c; Wickert and Schaefer, 2011). Their position is one of ‘loving struggle’ with less critical researchers and practitioners – of pursuing ‘dialogue aimed at both inquiry and advocacy’ and ‘working with managers who are trying to find a better way’ (Adler, 2008: 926). As a part of this, they propose increased study of ‘heterotopian’ and ‘close alernatives’, that is, that CMS expand the kind of empirical material it engages with. However, they stop short of questioning whether critical performativity should be pursued within the bounds of CMS’ canonical theories, seeming to assume that this should be the case. There are several reasons why this assumption is problematic.

For one, the canonical perspectives of CMS hardly enable a potential-focused engagement with progressive mainstream practices. Such a potential-focused engagement would require theoretical positions capable of valorizing such practices, yet the radically critical nature of CMS’ canonical theories would typically insist on the presence of some form of oppression or domination, and the failure to identify such practices would easily be interpreted either as a form of cooptation or naïveté on the part of the researcher. We lack, within the canon, theoretical repertoires to ‘show that many alternatives to current systems of managerial domination and exploitation currently exist and do indeed work’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 554). What canonical CMS analysis does succeed at doing is de-naturalization in the sense that it highlights that there are alternatives to the managerial organization (e.g. Parker, 2011a, 2011b) and that organizations studies should encompass a broader range of issues (e.g. Alvesson and Spicer, 2012b; Costas and Kärreman, 2011; Cunha et al., 2008; Grey and Costas, 2010). However, when it comes to articulating the relative value of novel or heterotopian practices, the inherently critical position provides all too few resources. This is not to say that CMS is over-determined. Rather, it is to say that the oppositional politics inscribed within the canonical perspectives do not support practices that might be both performative and progressive. Properly enacting a CMS habitus would, judging by the canonical perspectives, entail not engaging with the very question of the ends of managerial and organizational efficiency.

In this way, canonical theories pay little heed to the conditions faced by practitioners or students, who either are or will be based in an organization where what might seem like normative arguments are unlikely be accepted if isolated from instrumental concerns (Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011; Walsh and Weber, 2002). In such contexts, the problem with references to Marxism and critical theory is not that they are ‘off-putting’ (Reedy, 2008), but that they refuse to accept management and the corporation as legitimate starting points. Of course, such phenomena can and should be subjected to critical reflection but there is a ‘heavy’ institutional embeddedness that makes them hard to change in anything but incremental ways, requiring us to find ways to be critical and progressive within the context they establish. The problem with the severely critical position is that it leaves even those audiences who might be responsive to CMS to ‘struggle alone’ (Adler, 2008). Rather than taking a first step toward acknowledging the conditions faced by most practitioners and accepted (perhaps too uncritically) by most business school academics, which dictate that organizations attempt to generate profit, CMS scholarship instead seems to claim that the critical position is on a higher and more reflexive plane, intent on understanding, rather than ‘improving’, organizations.

The problem is compounded by the model of research created by the canons of CMS, which aspires to a particular form of sophistication. This sophistication is not only ascribed on the basis of the source of theories, but also in the valorization of rhetorical complexity and, in dire cases, inaccessibility (Grey and Sinclair, 2006). Of course, a certain element of verfremdung can be a part of the theoretical message, just as accessibility need not be a virtue in itself. However, assuming that greater sophistication follows from a certain style of argument or a certain mobilization of theoretical sources easily contributes to the elitist or insular air that closes CMS off from discussion with outsiders (e.g. Adler, 2008; Stookey, 2008; Tatli, 2012). Indeed, what appears as elitism to CMS insiders might simply appear to outsiders as lack of openness to alternative perspectives and not as a particular intellectual superiority that is sometimes claimed to be invoked (Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011). At the very least, it hardly makes for a respectful space as regards the views of organizational actors, even if it may exoticize the familiar and de-naturalize in important ways.

Now these problems do not imply that critical performativity cannot be pursued at all within the framings of CMS’s canonical theories, but they do reveal that the task is hardly as straightforward as implied by Spicer et al. (2009), particularly as regards pragmatically making CMS open (and interesting) to outsiders. Obviously, achieving openness need not be the primary concern of a research field. But for a research field aspiring to push practice in a progressive direction, becoming closed and limited to internal debates seems somewhat atrophic – CMS scholarship might be very radical and critical, but this is hardly of great interest if it is only discussed by CMS scholars.

It would seem, then, that actually embracing critical performativity calls for more than the reconsideration of how CMS engages. The theoretical canons, formed by and forming the habitus of CMS researchers, also play an important role. To this end, our reconsideration might beneficially start with the question that Czarniawska (2010) raised in response to Parker’s lament on the ‘schlerosis of criticism’ (2010): ‘How critical does the management research need to be?’. Or, by extension, might critique not also be practiced with non-critical and non-canonical theory?

Subversive functionalism: An alternative to canonical critique

If the canon of CMS is an obstacle to the pursuit of critical performativity, what kind of alternative theory might one consider to expand it? Part of CMS’s critical stance relative to the business school is, of course, related to mainstream theory and the sometimes explicit, but mostly implicit, claim that the university remains a superior source of theoretical perspectives for critical analyses. Using non-business school perspectives might simply be part of maintaining a critical distance, of creating a reflective distance between the theory-infused practices that we study and the theory we use to study it. Moreover, appropriating theory from alternative sources has been instrumental in articulating a distinctly critical position for CMS and establishing a different type of debate. At the same time, though, it also contributes to the insular and disengaged tendencies of CMS.

Might CMS, then, if we recognize the problems of the canonical theoretical repertoire, expand it by looking not beyond, but within the business school, to theories that are not, by the field’s habitual standards, critical or sophisticated? Could we, instead of waiting for the mainstream to co-opt and subvert critical analyses for functionalist aims (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005), employ what appears functionalist for critical aims?

At first glance, this would seem improbable: one of CMS’s key critiques is that mainstream business school theory not only lacks intellectual rigor and reflection, but also is heavily managerialist and instrumentalist in its orientation. Taking a less essentialist and more potential-focused perspective, the question is whether or not existing, mainstream perspectives could be leveraged and re-read to promote a more radical reflection about the nature of management and to encourage progressive practices, both of which are touted as aspirations of CMS and, particularly, of critically performative CMS. We have seen this thinking in the effort of some scholars to introduce a non-canonical theory like actor network theory (ANT) to CMS (e.g. Alcadipani and Hassard, 2010), but is the same true of those theories that CMS construe as ‘mainstream’? The answer is probably ‘yes’, and although working subversively with mainstream perspectives would not be a straightforward task, it might have great potential.

This kind of engagement with mainstream theory would require both re-reading and some element of critical re-application, or subversion. However, such subversive functionalism might be possible if understood as a potential-focused appropriation of mainstream theories for critically performative purposes. Before proceeding, it is worth underscoring that this should not be read as a call to reject the canons of CMS. It is, after all, through what now seems a set of canonical perspectives that CMS has established and solidified itself to a degree that we can actually question it in a systematic way. Were it not for the established canons, there would not be a ‘framework’ or theoretical means readily available for challenging the implicit normativity inherent in most business school research. Also, the established canons provide a valuable reflexive background for the articulation of critique. Rather than discarding the canon, subversive functionalism is about an expansion of CMS’s repertoire beyond the habitual and bringing other theoretical approaches to the foreground for critical analysis. It should be seen as an invitation for CMS to re-think critique and take it out of the box in which institutionalization has increasingly put it.

A subversively functionalist expansion of the CMS canon would seek to build on the institutionalization of CMS and go beyond Spicer et al. in thinking about the political agendas that are foundational to CMS by applying critically performative tactics to CMS’ own canons. Rather than dismissing mainstream business research on essentialist grounds, a subversively functionalist approach would open CMS up to mainstream perspectives that might facilitate a critique of managerialism and the modern organization and use these perspectives to engage in a closer dialogue with practitioners, students and other researchers. Such an expansion would articulate critique by combining political awareness, explicit normativity and a rhetoric that engages, rather than discounts. It might set aside radicalism for more incremental and piecemeal work, or frame radicalism in a different way that stops striving for theoretical or intellectual purity (Grey, 2005; Grice and Humphies, 1997; Reedy, 2008) to engage in a more pragmatic fashion and to ‘make room’ for critical work (Zald, 2002). It might mean working with agendas of concern to both mainstream research and practice with a performative intention (in the sense of actually being about means–ends optimization). Subversive functionalism should, then, be seen as a supplementary tactic for CMS, an attempt to work pragmatically with existing discourses to voice a critique that pursues the same political ends without being pigeon-holed by its own habitual practices.

In part, this is about an expansion of the legitimate vernacular in CMS. Spicer et al. (2009) note that CMS, as it is currently practiced, is dominated by ‘dark metaphors’ of organization, which seems to follow quite naturally from the fundamentally suspicious stance that many CMS scholars take. However, as they also point out, as helpful as these metaphors might be, they also make CMS research somewhat ‘overdetermined’ and ‘ungainly’ (Spicer et al., 2009: 549) or, depending on your perspective, predictably dismal. As such, they suggest that we engage with more ‘mixed metaphors’ to open up a more open-ended inquiry. Such an expansion, however, still seems to exclude terms that are thought to be too performative or functionalist in nature, such as viability, incentives, competitive advantage and efficiency. Even if it can be explained by CMS researchers not considering those terms interesting or even relevant to the study of organization and management, it also excludes CMS research from a wealth of academic debates on alternative organization and social issues in management. Perhaps more importantly, it is a relatively privileged dismissal to make – a privilege that is rarely shared by the students and practitioners, or even some business school academics (Zald, 2002), who might otherwise be receptive to critical work.

How might such subversive functionalist work be attempted, then? How do we move beyond a canonical repertoire and recognized vernaculars while still remaining critical?

Tactics for subversive functionalism

I propose that we can think about doing subversively functionalist research in at least three ways, all of which have the potential to be both theoretically and practically relevant. These three tactics involve exploring implications, exploring alternatives comparatively and exploring integration.

As it is practiced canonically, CMS scholarship rarely engages very deeply with bodies of theory that are considered mainstream, functionalist or uncritical. Some bodies of work, for example, ANT, may not be canonical, but at least get explicitly critiqued and debated (Alcadipani and Hassard, 2010; Durepos and Mills, 2012; Whittle and Spicer, 2008). There is, however, a wealth of other theory, the potential of which is not even discussed and is only mobilized to serve as a target of critique. Organizational economics provides a really clear case in point of this – its purposes dismissed as managerial, its assumptions erroneous and its philosophical grounding inadequate. The question is, however, if it might not also provide an entry point for a different form of critical questioning. We might explore implications of that type of research much more closely.

Consider, for instance, Foss’s (2003) explanation of the failure of an ‘internal hybrid’ – a hierarchical organization infused with elements of market coordination. His explanation, based on incentive structures and decision rights, draws attention to managers’ tendency to meddle in devolved activities and decision rights. The organizational model he examines must ultimately be abandoned, he posits, because top management failed to give adequate consideration to how projects would ultimately be managed in an internal market and he suggests increased reflection on the design of incentive structures and invites managers to commit more strongly to non-intervention when working in hybrid organizations. However, from a more fundamentally skeptical perspective, there are numerous deeper implications, of course. On the analysis’s own premises, it suggests that the incentives for the exercise of managerial authority might in themselves be problematic – that management in the hierarchical context is somehow by design led to over-intervene and, hence, contributes not to increased efficiency but the inverse (see also Luthans, 1988), prompting us to ask, with Foss, about the nature of managerial work (Hales, 1986; Mintzberg, 1973) and its social necessity. After all, if management does not contribute to ensuring optimal efficiency, wherein lies the contribution and explanation for the privileges enjoyed by those higher up the organizational ladder (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992b; Grey, 2009)? Or how might coordination be achieved by other means than management and internal markets (Adler, 2001; Adler et al., 2008; Chen and O’Mahony, 2009; O’Mahony and Ferraro, 2007; Rennstam, 2012). Building on and challenging implications in this way might, instead of critiquing the mainstream for lack of reflexivity, allow us to make reflective contributions through more specific excavations and radical questioning. In this way, mainstream theory might be developed to allow also for more radically critical analysis.

Aside from introducing such reflections, there is also a possibility in exploring integration that would similarly seek to intervene in the theoretical debates of mainstream fields. The intention of such an approach would not be the subversive reading of mainstream theory, but rather to use conventionally critical perspectives to contribute into that theory. Part of the CMS critique of mainstream theory is its reductionist rendering of social phenomena – the dominantly managerial perspectives and economic explanations of the mainstream might be said to treat many of the topics studied by CMS as ‘either irrelevant to the analysis of organizations or as a set of resources and constraints for the pursuit of performativity’ (Fournier and Grey, 2000: 27).

The question, however, is whether CMS might actually, by engaging more directly with mainstream theory, seek to demonstrate how critical perspectives actually complement or enlighten them. Alvesson and Spicer’s (2012b) work on a stupidity-based theory of organization might be instructive in this regard. Their argument engages with questions of decision-making and the lack of reflexivity and substantive reasoning and proposes that organizations are in many regards functionally stupid. This is simultaneously hugely problematic for organizations and society, but also functionally beneficial for the individual organization and manager. What their analysis does, in other words, is to establish a bridge between critical perspectives and a very substantial body of work on suboptimal decision making in organizations that is widely recognized within business academia. It shows how a critical perspective on communicative distortion can actually provide important complementary explanations to organizational phenomena. This kind of reading might allow for the re-introduction of elements of mystery (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007) or more fundamental problematizations (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2011) in mainstream inquiry, because it opens up a space for extending mainstream theories beyond the readily available concepts. The work of Hjorth and Steyaert on the nature of entrepreneurship is also exemplary for bringing mainstream and critical theoretical orientations into dialogue around the argument that entrepreneurship ‘belongs to society and not simply to economy’ (Hjorth, 2012: 2).

Finally, exploring alternatives comparatively refers to the subversive application of functionalist theory. As part of an effort to de-naturalize what management and organization is, CMS has done considerable work in exploring alternative organization (e.g. Parker, 2011a, 2011b; Parker et al., 2007). As Reedy and Learmonth (2009) suggest, alternative organizations can provide insights for management research and particularly management education. As this is done canonically, the examination of alternative organizations can serve a revelatory purpose, proving the existence of an alternative and showing its workings. Such work can disconfirm the famous saying that ‘there is no alternative’ (Fournier and Grey, 2000) to the large manufacturer corporations that have historically been the focus of management research and can in that way push at the boundaries of what can conceivably be studied in a business school context – after all, pirates, angels, clowns and mobsters are undoubtedly organized, despite not being the subject of many business school classes (Parker, 2011a).

In the same vein, utopian images of organization can inspire how we think about more mundane organization of human activity. The trouble with utopian studies, however, is that utopias are just that, namely utopian and therefore often distant from the currently experienced conditions. In response to this problem, Spicer et al. (2009: 551) do suggest the study of closer alternatives, or heterotopias, as sites where micro-emancipation might occur, thus nurturing ‘a sense of hope and possibility’. In this sense, heterotopias might be thought of as piecemeal developments towards progressive goals or what Schofield (2002) referred to as ‘cases of what could be’: empirical practices that seem to represent a progressive development, but are used marginally.

In contrast to the theoretical canons of CMS, functionalist perspectives have an important contribution to make to the study of such ‘close alternatives’, and that is in assessing their viability and advantages over more conventional practices. Although we know that there are alternatives to the large, vertically integrated manufacturer firm in which managers are in charge, CMS research generally refrains from studying when those alternatives might be a better and more efficient choice or even be able to compete with them. Cooperatives, to give one example, might represent an alternative form of organization based on community rather than hierarchy. However, whereas some fields have done considerable research on the efficiency of such arrangements (e.g. Sexton and Iskow, 1993), we do not see CMS examining whether or how it might be a viable alternative for entrepreneurial firms, for example, to pursue this form of organization. Similarly, Wolff ’s (2012) analysis of worker-self-directed enterprises suggests that this type of organization might give distinct competitive advantages. Seeking to make alternative organizations available and practicable for CMS’ manager audience might entail doing exactly this kind of research to dispel some of the myths of managerial necessity and effectiveness and demonstrate that alternative organization is not relevant for just dreamers and philanthropists.

Illustrating subversive functionalism: The case of user innovation

To illustrate how subversive functionalism might be applied, I will offer a reading and critically inspired re-reading of user innovation research. I will argue that its focus on the innovative and, by implication, value-creating contribution of communities, on non-authoritative coordination, and on outlaw innovators enables a non-canonical approach to critique and might provide a platform for studying progressive practices in affirmative ways. Indeed, user innovation research is exemplary of functionalist research that has drawn numerous critical conclusions and examined a range of social phenomena that have largely been ignored by CMS scholars. The purpose of this illustration, selective and brief as it is, is to introduce the field and the kind of questions it might allow CMS to explore in the future.

User innovation research has taken its point of departure from the empirical phenomenon that it is often users, and not manufacturer firms, that are driving innovation in certain sectors of the economy. As user innovation research has primarily been conducted in a business school context, it has drawn primarily on explanations grounded in economics, while employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore how users innovate (Von Hippel, 2005), how new markets and industries develop (Baldwin et al., 2006), how users become entrepreneurs (Shah and Tripsas, 2007) and how national policy can be adapted to facilitate user innovation (Henkel and Von Hippel, 2005; Von Hippel, 2005). In doing so, it has revealed how a range of seemingly alternative organizing and organizational practices contribute to innovation.

User innovation, it turns out, often takes place in the context of collaborating communities. This is true of the very instructive example of open source software (Von Krogh and Von Hippel, 2006) and the more general development of products (Hienerth, 2006; Nuvolari, 2004). User innovation research has found that rather than competing in a way similar to manufacturers, users tend to voluntarily contribute unpaid work on the production of public goods and freely reveal their innovations to others (Harhoff et al., 2003). As a result, users can develop very large-scale innovations (e.g. software packages, sports equipment, medical treatments or automobiles) and share ideas, thus benefiting from other users’ elaboration and feedback. It has also been shown that users willingly undertake not only the ‘interesting’ work of developing new solutions, but also engage in mutual aid, teaching one another and doing the often mundane work of testing and de-bugging (Jeppesen, 2005; Lakhani and Von Hippel, 2003). In many ways, user innovation is an exploration of the role and value of communities as a socialized alternative to the dominant vision that production and innovation only take place within formal and managed organizations in the pursuit of profit. Unlike the way CMS engages with communities as an alternative (e.g. Adler, 2001; Adler et al., 2008; Parker et al., 2007), framing collaborative communities in innovation terms is not an overtly critical, political gesture, nor is it anti-corporate or against management in its rhetoric. By CMS standards, it hardly even qualifies as skeptical. However, what it highlights is the value and viability of alternative forms of production that can complement, but also outcompete, that of manufacturers and in doing so contribute to social welfare (Henkel and Von Hippel, 2005; Raasch and Von Hippel, 2012).

What is particularly interesting in that analysis, however, is that user innovation research on open source software has examined non-authoritative co-ordination as an alternative to managerial control and supervision (Lakhani and Wolf, 2003; O’Mahony and Ferraro, 2007; O’Mahony and Lakhani, 2011). The development of open source software is an inherently complex process involving the participation and co-ordination of (potentially) thousands of individual actors around the development, selection and testing of solutions (Baldwin and Von Hippel, 2011; Von Krogh and Von Hippel, 2006). Following a managerial logic, such work would require substantial and systematic intervention by managers aimed at setting direction, coordinating tasks and controlling performance, yet in open source we see that decisions can be distributed laterally based on merit or negotiated between participants (Dahlander and O’Mahony, 2011; Fleming and Waguespack, 2007; Lakhani and Von Hippel, 2003). Control, rather than being a task for specific individuals, is undertaken collectively. Management, as we understand it conventionally, has much less leverage over workers, who are free to leave projects in which they perceive authority as exercised illegitimately. On such ‘democratized’ foundations, management comes to play a minor role and is replaced by practices that might almost resemble communicative action (Heng and Moor, 2003; Shirky, 2005). This has obvious organizational implications that we have yet to explore in detail, particularly as regards alternative bases for the division of labor inside more conventional organizations.

Beyond providing alternatives to the organization of production and coordination, user innovation research also examines different activities and actors than those associated with the managerial organization. Two examples of alternative sources of innovation that can be valuable and ‘close’ to the goals of mainstream organizations are hackers, sometimes conceptualized as ‘outlaw users’, and user entrepreneurs – and yet these sources of innovation also pose a challenge to that mainstream (e.g. Massa, 2011). Outlaw users, according to Flowers (2008: 180), are users who ‘actively oppose or ignore the limitations imposed on them by proposed or established technical standards, products, systems or legal frameworks’ and, on account of such activity, they can actually be viewed as ‘significant agent[s] of technological change’ (Flowers, 2008: 187). The resistance on the part of outlaw users might target the hegemony of large organizations and corporate control over citizens (Coleman and Hill, 2003; Hill, 2012) and attack the way they restrict information and regulate standards and behavior. Importantly, though, outlaw users have considerable innovation potential. In a very real sense, there are theoretical bridges to be established between innovation, organization and social movements around this phenomenon. Albeit to a lesser degree, the same can also be the case with user entrepreneurs (Shah and Tripsas, 2007). Some user entrepreneurs pursue alternative lifestyles and are considered too non-conformist for traditional organizations (Shah, 2000); they represent a different kind of resistance that challenges the conventional notion of the purposes and instrumental goals of organizations. Their activity could well be taken to represent a form of resistance or possibly emancipation at the micro-level, in offering us a different vision and realized ideal of work. This gains legitimacy through the research focus on their innovative contributions rather than on their overt political opposition.

Relative to the standards of CMS, user innovation research offers a form of critique that is obviously subdued and falls short of complying with the institutionalized model of CMS research practice. Indeed, innovation researchers rarely use the term critique, nor do they apply the usual perspectives of CMS (see Iivari, 2010, for an exception). What is instructive about user innovation theory is that despite its ‘non-critical’ and (for CMS) non-canonical form, it provides an affirmative basis for articulating critique and studying progressive alternatives to mainstream organizations and management. While remaining recognizable to an audience in management practice and the business school mainstream, it de-naturalizes the necessity of management and appeals to the heterotopian, or even utopian, imagination. Although user innovation should not conjure up images of a proximate workers’ society, large-scale emancipation or imminently realized social justice, it does provide a vocabulary to think about progressive alternatives without setting itself against the goals of organizations (i.e. it is not directly opposed to performative ends), and thus it takes a small step toward realizing the alternative.

Conclusion

Although many within CMS seem to agree that CMS has become institutionalized, and have been very keen to debate what to make of it, there seems to have been a tendency not to also discuss the role played by critical theories in that institutionalization. While surprising for a field ‘noted for its thoroughgoing critique of anything that moves’ (Mills and Mills, 2012: 117), this is also unfortunate: although a canon of CMS perspectives might in some senses contribute to its academic uniqueness and label attractiveness, provide an established space for critical research, and possibly (but debatably) advance the depth of theoretical debate, it also provides a model of research from which it is hard to deviate. And if we follow Spicer et al.’s assertion that critical performativity is a constructive direction for CMS, there may be good reasons to consider some deviation from that model.

What this article has proposed is an approach to expanding the canon of critical perspectives in CMS in order to realize more of a politically progressive agenda. To enable CMS to become more critically performative by asking different questions and working with different types of theory, I have proposed the concept of subversive functionalism as three interrelated tactics for how CMS can engage subversively with functionalist theory, re-reading it for critical ends, applying it to the study of alternative organization and integrating critical insights to it.

Compared to the canonical theories of CMS, subversive functionalist work might, firstly, enable us to highlight the critical potential of existing functionalist theory. This would allow us to broaden the scope of critical work beyond our own conversations and make it possible for wider groups to engage with critical positions. Second, applying functionalist theory to the study of alternative organizations or alternative practices might make such alternatives seem less antagonistic to current practices and indeed construct them as ‘viable alternatives’ instead of merely ‘close alternatives’. It might also invite a greater research interest in alternative organizations in ‘mainstream’ academia.

Thirdly, subversive engagement might allow us to incorporate critical insights in functionalist theorizations, highlighting the instrumental effects of the issues addressed by more conventional critical research. Although this is by no means straightforward, unproblematic or immune to cooptation and loss of ‘critical edge’, it may nonetheless prove ‘constructive’. There is an almost moral necessity for CMS to remain critically reflexive also about the consequences of the theoretical exclusions that get consecrated in the field. The same applies to the idea that CMS is indeed a big tent. Ideally, this should not only be an experience for those within CMS, but also for those currently outside it who might be interested in doing critical organizational research and doing it in diverse ways.

The question that we should debate going forward is not only how to move beyond the theoretical canons of CMS critique, but also what is most important to CMS scholarship, and what should hold the CMS project together: to do a particular form of research to understand the world, or to do research to contribute to a particular kind of change in it?